Corporate Profile

To bridge the communications gap between Malta’s biggest trade union and its 40,000 members and their dependants.
&
To grow and to diversify to meet the public’s ever-growing demand for information.

The Union Press is one of Malta’s leading publishing and printing houses. It consists of two business segments: newspaper publishing and commercial printing. Conceived in 1944, the Union Press today publishes and prints Malta’s most popular newspapers as well a TV magazine, plus of course being involved in the planning and printing of a huge assortment of commercial products, from simple personal cards to complex four-colour brochures and magazines.

With over 150 employees and an annual turnover of approximately Lm1.9 million, the Union Press consumes 1000 tonnes of newsprint each year to print 8 million newspapers and approximately 900 tonnes of paper to meet the commercial printing requirements of its ever-growing list of clients.

The Union Press is now one of Malta’s most important printing and publishing houses – in fact it has been a leader in this sector for 25 years.

However, the Union Press is not the result of an instant success formula. It climbed to its present prestigious position very, very gradually. The track record of the enterprise is very indicative of the Union Press’s persistent effort to expand.

From the John Bull ambient in Marsamxetto Harbour, the Union Press in 1952 moved to Mayfair House in Old Bakery Street, Valletta, where the GWU had set up its headquarters.

The Union Press occupied the entire ground floor of Mayfair House but within the span of a very few years, the place became too small for the big expansion plans of the enterprise.

So the move in 1961 to the Workers’ Memorial Building, then the brand new GWU headquarters in South Street corner with Old Bakery Street gave the Union Press a new lease of life. Finally, the Union Press had the space it required so badly. The spacious facilities at the Workers’ Memorial Building were used as a springboard to push its entire range of commercial activity onto a new national level. Within a couple of years, a huge injection of new investment turned the Union Press into a leading printing house. The printing capacity was increased enormously thanks to the purchase of new printing machines.

During the same period, the work force at the Union Press went up to over 150 employees: the stage was finally set for its consolidation as a forward-looking printing and publishing enterprise – with national newspapers of its own and with an array of printing services available for the business, commercial and industrial communities.

But what once was a huge building with thousands of square metres of space, within 35 years became a constraint on further expansion to meet modern day printing requirements, particularly in the colour sector of the business.

Hence its latest move to its present site at the Marsa Industrial Estate. The 6,000 square metre factory space that the Union Press is occupying now is an ideal launch pad for the new millenium. The space is big enough to cater for personnel and machinery requirements for the immediate future and a little beyond that as well.

Whether Marsa is the long-sought, permanent home of the Union Press will be decided a couple of decades into the new millenium.

In the 1960s, the Union Press was instrumental in the popularisation process of the Maltese newspaper industry. Previously, local newspapers were the privilege of the English-reading elite and the British Services personnel.

First it-Torca, and in subsequent years, l-orizzont,introduced newspaper reading in the Maltese language into the average Maltese household.

The first publication of the Union Press rolled off the printing press on July 8, 1944. This was The Torch, a four-page bilingual (English/Maltese) weekly.

Gradually the number of pages increased but the format remained basically the same until October 25, 1959 when It-Torca as we know it today was born.

It-Torca became Malta’s first Sunday newspaper published entirely in the Maltese language. It had a modern format and was intended as Sunday reading for all the family.

It was an instant success. Circulation increased consistently and for more than 25 years, it has had a consistent run of 30,000 copies – by far Malta’s most popular newspaper.

l-orizzont was a natural sequel of the Union Press’s successful Sunday paper.

Malta badly needed a Maltese daily which carried news and views of all that is primarily Maltese. l-Orizzont, with its own brand of modern journalism, fitted the bill like a glove from day one of publication: 19th November 1962.

Within a couple of years, l-orizzont became a household name, part and parcel of a community hungry for a newspaper in a language they could really understand.

l-Orizzont hit the 20,000 mark in circulation terms immediately after its inception and it has remained comfortably in this position, without any real challengers, for the last 25 years.

Since 1963, the Union Press seriously attempted to penetrate the English-reading market first with the Malta News and then with the Weekend Chronicle. Over the years, both failed to acquire the popular readership base needed to sustain the hefty cost of a newspaper. Both vanished from the market by the beginning of the 80s when production costs really became prohibitive.

The same unhappy fate was shared by two sports publications: Sport in the 1960s expired after a decade; Sprint – despite its attractive colour magazine format – lasted for just four years.

Contrastingly, Antenna – a family TV magazine – is now well into its 10th year of publication.

This confirms that in the publishing of newspapers and magazines in the Maltese language, the Union Press knows no equal.

Antenna has carved a permanent niche in the Maltese market. Antenna is a typical television magazine in colour featuring all local and Italian TV schedules. It sells 10,000 copies every week.

From the very beginning, the printing department of the Union Press was a natural offshoot of the enterprise’s original mission to publish newspapers.

The Union Press became totally autonomous as a printing house very early in its formative days. The Union Press not only purchased huge printing presses to print its newspapers but also a large assortment of ancillary apparatus required to make-ready for printing the editorial content of the newspapers.

The printing department was set up to handle the technical side of the operation. Eventually this department started to utilise better the machinery at its disposal by venturing into commercial printing for outside clients.

With the ever-increasing demand for commercial printing and the different approaches and techniques required in the commercial field as opposed to the printing of newspapers, the Union Press – as soon as it moved to the spacious shopfloor at the Workers’ Memorial Building – decided to reorganise this department to meet the demand.

By the beginning of the 1970s, the commercial printing department was equipped with modern printing machinery and staffed with professional printers. Thanks to this machine-printer partnership, the commercial printing department was well and truly on its way to graduate into one of Malta’s leading printing enterprises.

The Union Press has maintained this position amongst the elite ever since.

Today the Union Press commercial printing department is equipped to give its hundreds of clients a complete service, from the planning stage to the finished product.

Thanks to its long experience and its outstanding track-record, the Union Press enjoys an enviable reputation in the commercial sector for its good quality printing.